My Other Love

Previously my music has only been available on the Internet at different sites where guitar player gather to help each other develop every aspect their skills. Thanks to the ecouragement of people at these sites I have now recorded my first CD with my own tunes.

Sometimes I set myself challenges to get me to think in new directions. This was such an occasion. The challenge was to not use the same guitar for more than one part of the tune. The exception was that if I did use a guitar previously used in the tune, I must use a different amp profile in the KPA. I had a lot of fun with this!

This tune is a part of my Style Pack series for the Atomic Amps AmpliFire. Each Style Pack contains the tune, the backing track, the presets for the AmpliFire I used when I recorded the tune and a pdf-document with the chords and production notes. You can find the Style Packs for download here.

Funk is a different thing to different people but to me this tune is funk to the bone. Choppy rhythm guitars played on strat style guitars and slap bass that moves your bottom no matter if you want it to or not.

Guitar: Collings City Limits recorded direct with the Kemper Profiling Amplifier using a Dumble profile from Michael Britt.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special also recorded direct using the Kemper using an Ampeg profile from Michael Britt.

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.3

Comments:

When I attended The Royal Conservatory of Music many years ago, I had a friend, Olle Junholm, who's a wonderful guitar player. A few weeks ago we met and talked a lot about those days. That made me think of this tune, which I actually wrote back in 1991. I listened to it and decided to redo it with the sounds I use today. As I both play and arrange differently today it came out quite a bit different than back then. But it still shows the same influences as the original.

Guitar: James Tyler SE HD recorded direct with the Atomic Amps AmpliFire.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special also recorded direct using the AmpliFire.

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer
Sample Logic Rhythmology

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.3

Comments:

This tune is a part of my Style Pack series for the Atomic Amps AmpliFire. Each Style Pack contains the tune, the backing track, the presets for the AmpliFire I used when I recorded the tune and a pdf-document with the chords and production notes. You can find the Style Packs for download here.

The tune is a throwback to the 80's when shimmery clean guitar arpeggios and powerful smooth solos graced the songs. If you like the sound from that time, this track is for you!

Guitar: James Tyler SE HD recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier using a profile by me for clean sounds and a 70s Marshall profile for the solo made by Michael Britt and tweaked by me.
The synth lead and the octave bass were played by guitar through a Boss GS-10.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded direct using a Kemper with a Ampeg profile by Michael Britt.

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.3

Comments:

This is a tune where I tried to combine a slow tempo with a funky groove with that slapp bass and the drums being locked.
I love the big clean tri-chorus sounds of the 80s and 90s. Here I contrasted wide chorusy detuned arpeggios with snappy centered cleans with no chorus and no reverb.

Guitar: Ruokangas Mojo King recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier using an 3rd Power Dreamweaver amp profile made by Michael Britt
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded direct using an Atomic Amps AmpliFire.
Piano: Bechsteing Digital Grand
Organ: NI Kontakt Vintage Organs

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.3

Comments:

The Ruokangas Mojo King is still taking mee in unexpected directions. I wondered what I could do with the series switch and found out is was a great sound for slide. I have never owned a guitar with action as low as on the Mojo King and it is still the best guitar I've had for slide.

I'm still letting my Ruokangas Mojo King take me into its own directions. This is a smooth jazz tune where I previoulsy would have reached for a humbucker guitar. But I find the Mojo King lends itself well to this kind of tune as well.

Guitar: Tele with maple neck and ash body. Clean sound recorded direct using an old Boss CS-2 compressor direct to the audio interface. The lead sound was recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. I used a Michael Britt 70s Marshall profile.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded irect using a Kemper with a Michael Britt Ampeg profile.
Synths: Rob Papen Blue II, Rob Papen Predator and KVR31 Synthmaster

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

I wanted to try to get a really cool funky rhythm guitar sound with a tele. This is what I came up with. Loads of fun to play some funky music.

Guitar: Blade Texas Custom 62 recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. I used a the amp from a Michael Britt 70s Marshall profile and the cabinet from a 69 50watt Marshall also from Mr Britt.
Bass: UVI Falcon
Synths: UVI Falcon, KVR31 Sythmaster and Spectrasonics Omnishephere

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

What can I say? I really love my Blade Texas. This is so sensitive to pick attack that I can sit for hours just exploring the nuances. And the neck profile is just so utterly conmfortable it's no effort to sit for long sessions.

When I got the Blade Texas, I finally found a strat style guitar with three single coils that had a bridge pick up that was useful. It can do fat and not shrill cleans and it can do focused overdrive. In this tune I was inspired by some comment I hava had for the playing on Spanky Funky regarding the trem bar work. So I wanted to see if I could expand on that in another musical style. Thus the trem bar workout in both the theme and the solo in this tune. The Blade Texas has a vintage style trem with a screw in arm but Blade set it up so well it really works even with this kind of use. The guitar is a very well executed example of how you take a classic design and change what need to be changed with love and respect for the original design to make it a superb example of what a great guitar can be today. These thoughts gave me the title for this tune.

Guitar: Blade Texas Custom 62 recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The profile used was a prototype profile that came with the KPA when I got it for beta testing.
Bass: Squier Jazz Bass (JV-series)

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

I originally wrote and recorded this tune in 1992 but wasn't happy with it. There was something about the sound and dynamics that didn't sit quite right. That's partly why i called it Anywhen. I thought that would be the time I would be happy whith it. A few weeks ago I got a new guitar (Blade Texas Custom 62) and when I played it clean I immediately thought this is the sound. So I rerecorded it and now here it is. So now I gave the tune the name Anywhen Now because now I'm happy with how it sounds, so this is most probably the final recording of this tune.

Guitar: Collings I-35LC recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The profile used was one made by myself and part of the #3 Black Goop profiling session and is available here in the Gear section.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special
Electric Piano: AAS Lounge Lizard 4.0
Brass section: Native Instruments Session Horns

Drums:

Native Instruments Studio Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

I started writing this tune about two years ago but was still searching for the right melody and the the right sound. So when I was tweaking one of the profiles from the Black Goop Sessions #3 this is the sound I wanted and I quickly took it from there.

Guitar: Collings City Limits recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The profile used was one made by myself and part of the #3 Black Goop profiling session.
Bass: Native Instruments Jazz Bass
Electric Piano: AAS Lounge Lizard 4.0
Synth: Rob Papen Predator

Drums:

Native Instruments Studio Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

Here's a tune with a latin twist. I freely admit to being influenced by Carlos Eduardo Allarendo, Luis Salinas and Lee Ritenour when it comes to this kind of music and I think that can be heard in the tune. Still Happy Smooth Jazz.

Guitar: Collings I-35LC recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The profile used was one made by myself and part of the #3 Black Goop profiling session.
Bass: KVR31 Audio Synthmaster
Electric Piano: AAS Lounge Lizard 4.0
Synth: KVR31 Synthmaster and UVI Falcon.

Drums:

Native Instruments Studio Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

Someone once told me that my playing sounds "happy". Even my blues sounds happy according to him. So I gues I'm a happy sort of person and this tune is definitely in the genre Happy Smooth Jazz.

Guitar: James Tyler SE Burning Water for lead and Classic for rhythm recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The clean sounds are Wolly Coats Extra Spanky profiles by Michael Britt. The lead sound is a to Marshall profile from Michael.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded with the Kemper using a Amp Pig profile by Uwe Bossert.

Drums:

Toontracks Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.2

Comments:

Some time ago I wrote a tume where I used the Extra Spanky profiles by Michael Britt. I was aksed to write a tune showing the funk capabilities of those profiles. So I did! At the time I was also trying out some new delay algorithms in the Kemper so I included some sound using those as well. Lots of fun!

Guitar: James Tyler SE Burning Water recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The clean sound is a Wolly Coats Extra Spanky profile by Michael Britt. The lead sound is also a profile from Michael. This time a 69 Marshall.
All synth sounds by KVR331 Audio Synthmaster

Drums:

Toontracks Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

I was walking around thinking of a certain combination of bass sounds. When I sat down to record those bass lines, I had just installed the Synthmaster virtual instrument plugin. It's so inspiring I ended up with a full tune.

Guitar: James Tyler SE Burning Water recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier using a profile of a Marshall modified by Tommy Folkesson to his Brownie specification. Bass: PreSonus Mojito.
Synth pad. PreSonus Mojito

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

I have a thing for pop ballads so this what I ended up with after a writing session where I had no specific goal in mind, i.e. no paying client. :-)

Guitar: James Tyler Classic for rhythm and a James Tyler SE for lead. All guitar tracks recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier using a free TAF Blackstar for rhythm and my own Shur ML100 profile for lead.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amp using a free Ampeg SVT profile.

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer and Spectrasonics Stylus RMX

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

I'm fortunate to be working with Michael Britt on a number of his profile projects and have been spoiled by his quality work. But as I know, there are very many good profiles out there in the public domain for free (including my own on this site). So I set out to write a tune where I would use only free profiles. This is the result of this self challenge.

Guitar: Fender American Series Ash and Collings City Limits recorded direct with an Atomic Amps AmpliFIRE using an IR from The Amp Factory and a stock IR.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded direct with an Atomic Amps AmpliFIRE using an IR from The Amp Factory.
Hammond B3: Native Instruments Kontakt 5

Drums:

Native Instrument Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

For this tune I found myself wondering how much it would affect the playing if I used another guitar another day. So one day I first recorded the theme and the rhytm using a Tele and the next day I used a Collings with humbuckers. I did use the same Rumble amp model but found myself approaching the tune differently. Interesting!

Guitar: Collings I-35LC recorded direct with an Atomic Amps AmpliFIRE using an IR from The Amp Factory.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded direct with an Atomic Amps AmpliFIRE using an IR from The Amp Factory.
Rhodes: AAS Lounge Lizard 3

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

This is a smooth jazz track that I wrote as I was inspired by the Twin presets from The Amp Factory for the AmpliFIRE from Atomic Amps.

Guitar: James Tyler SE HD recorded direct with a Kemper Profiling Amplifier. Lead profile was a Marshal JPM by The Amp Factory. Clean profile was a rig made by myself to emulate an 80's rig with a Tristereo Chorus.
Bass: Spectrasonics Trilian
Synths: Rob Papen Blue II and Predator, Spectrasonics Omnisphere

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

Yet another expression of my feelings for my wife. This one very much influenced by the band Mezzoforte from Iceland.

Guitar: All acoustic parts were played on an inexpensive Sigma recorded direct with a Fishman Rare Earth soundhole pickup.
The electric parts left and right was a Fender Telecaster American Series Ash recorded direct
using a Kemper Profiling Amplifier with a 3rd Power Amp profile made by Michael Britt.
Bass: PreSonus Presence.

Drums:

Native Instruments Vintage Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

Although I love playing an acoustic guitar I seldom take the time to do it. This is a tune I've been working on for some time but for some reasons it didn't get finished until now.

Guitar: Lead guitar was a Collings City Limits recorded direct using using the Ethos pedal.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special recorded using the Kemper Profiling Amp with an Avalon profile.
Rhodes: Lounge Lizard 4
Synths: PreSonus Mai Tai

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 3.0

Comments:

At The Gear Page I often come across players that, for different reasons, inspire me. This tune is very much inspired by Stephan Lipinski (a.k.a. Pinner). One of his clips had his usually fantastic sound and there was this phrase he used that I liked. So I started noodling and came up with this tune. As it started out with one of Stephan's phrases I thought I would respectfully name the tune Paraphrase.

Funny thing is, that after I finished the tune and listened to Stephan's clip, my phrase doesn't remotely sound anything like Stephan's as it seems like however much I try to sound like someone else, I always come out playing and sounding like me. But I would still like to say thanks to Stephan for the inspiration.

Guitar: Lead guitar was a Collings City Limits recorded direct using using the Kemper Profiling Amplifier with a profile Dumble ODS by Michael Britt.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special
Synths: Rob Papen Blue 2 and Predator, U-he Diva

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 2.6

Comments:

The Kemper Profiling Amplifier loaded with Michael Britt's profiles continues to be a great source of inspiration. I was just in good mood and sat down to play and this tune came out.

Guitar: Lead guitar was a Collings City Limits recorded direct using using the Kemper Profiling Amplifier with a profile Dumble ODS by Michael Britt.
Rhythm guitar was a Tyler Studio Elite recorded direct using using the Kemper Profiling Amplifie with an unknown profile.
Bass: U-he Diva
Synths: Rob Papen Blue 2

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drums NY Drums 3 SDX

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 2.6

Comments:

This is a tune I wrote bcuase I was happy that the doctor had taken out 22 stitches out of my right hand and told me I could play again. So that's why this tune sounds so unapologetically optimistic.

Guitar: James Tyler Classic recorded direct using using the Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The clean part used a profile by Michael Britt called 3P Black Clean and the melody and lead used a heavily tweaked profile by Bill Ruppert called VG-99 GR Synth.
Bass: Rob Papen Sub Boom Bass
Synths: Rob Papen Blue 2

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drums NY Drums 3 SDX

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 2.6

Comments:

There is a guitar player named Dave Henderson from Austin, Texas, that seems to reinvent his playing and writing from time to time. As I was getting a bit tired of how I sounded I wanted to do something different. So I listened to some of Dave's stuff and decided to do some odd stuff with the rhythm arrangement, use a guitar with pickup selections I normally don't use and pick a lead sound from the KPA I don't usually use. And guess what? I still end up sounding like me. Go figure!

Guitar: James Tyler SE HD recorded direct using using the Kemper Profiling Amplifier. The clean part used a pre-production profile of an unknown amp. The melody and lead used the very excellent A-1987x Marshall profile from The Amp Factory.
Bass: Rob Papen Predator
Synths: Rob Papen Predator and Blue 2

Drums:

Toontrack Superior Drums

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 2.6

Comments:

I have had surgery done to my right hand due to Dupuytren's Contracture and am now in rehab and have just started playing after a few weeks of not being able to. So I needed a slower track that I could handle. So I wrote this tune.

When I visited NAMM 2015 I was asked if I was interested in trying out the new Amplifire amp modeler from Atomic Amps. I said yes and started fooling around with it. The first thing I tried was the Twin model. It was very fet and powerful unlike almost all other modelers so that led to some funk and that led to this tune. Twin used for rhythm. Deluxe fort first lead. Brown model for the rest of the melody/solo.

I wrote this tune as a response to show my wife what I felt when I all of a sudden realized that she really loves me. On many levels and in many ways. Michel's Dumble profile is so dynamic and so is marriage so I thought it was an eminently suitable profile for this tune.

This tune is very different from what I usually write and play. It's a medium tempo blues shuffle. I play slide about once a year and almost never write tunes where it fits. But this one was an obvious slide thing to me and I really enjoyed writing and playing it.

There's a really good story behind this tune and it shows you can get inspiration from anywhere and at anytime when you least expect it.
In my work I'm in steady contact with a Swedish IT company by the name Atea and they invited me to their yearly event called the IT-arena where they hold lectures and suppliers show their latest products. One of the suppliers was MicroSoft and they showed the new Surface Pro 3. As I didn't like the first version nor the second I was about to walk by when this guy Kevin told me to take a look, For some reason I stopped and listened to the pitch and when Kevin showed me the pen I was ready to leave as I never could draw and have lousy handwriting. He clicked on the pen and it opened up OneNote and saig I could write normally like on paper. I didn't believe him so I tried and it worked. As I only use paper nowdays when I write songs I had written some chord changes on the tablet. Kevin asked what it was and I told him it was a some chords for a song. When I looked at the chords I realized it could very well be a song. So I told Kevin that I would take it as a challenge to write a tune on those chords. We talked about a title and agreed that Surface Crusin´would be appropriate as I already had a sort of LA groove in mind. So now the tune is done and it's the first time I have written a tune totally in the digital domain. Thanks Kevin for the inspiration!

I've been listening a lot lately to Joe Davies from Atlanta, Georgia. Then I got Michael Britt's first profiles pack for the Kemper amp and there was this 3rd Power Blackface profile that just begged to be played in a style that Joe might. I'm definitely no Joe Davies but I couldn't resist writing a new tune and have a go at it.

I really don't want to call this a tune as it doesn't have a clear theme of melody. There's a hint of a melody n the first verse but that's it. The reason I made it and post it is that I just like the way it came out and I feel it's a valid piece of music anyway. So like it or not, here it is.

There's a story behind this tune that I'm proud of. Michael Britt of the US band Lonestar is one of the best at making profiles for the Kemper amp. He was profiling a Dumble amp and as I seem to have a reputation for loving the sound of those amps, Michael enlisted me to help beta test them and tweak them a bit to my taste. The first profile I tweaked to my happiness was this one.

There are few things I enjoy more in the morning than going to an American diner to have a good and large breakfast. There are also few things I like more than playing my Collings I-35LC through my Ethos HRM. So for some reason, one situation gave inspiration to the other and here's a new tune.

To my ears there's no better pedal to get close to this kind of sound than the Ethos. It's so inspiring and fun to play. I was playing around and this sound led to this tune. Style wise it's very much influenced by the slick produced pop of the 80s and 90s.

After finding the Custom '57 amp in the latest Scuffham update I just knew I had to record a jazzier kind of blues. This one is in F and there are a few chords here and there that may not be very standard but works well and I can still play the ordinary pentatonic things over them.

The influence from this one came from a lot of sounds I have heard from the Fulltone TERC unit. I don't own that so I set about getting that sound from the Kemper Profiling Amp. I think I got it fairly close. This kind of polished LA track needed some smooth saturated lead playing. So for this I took a profile of a Soldano that Lukather used to use back then and played with that. All the melody and lead was recorded using the same profile so all the changes in the sound was made selecting different pickups and working the guitar volume control.
You can download the profiles here.

I was taking a walk and this bassline came into my head and
I couldn't shake it. Then when I started recording it I realized
it was in 5/4 time. I usually don't do odd time so I was surprised
but had fun with it.

Guitar: James Tyler SE HD recorded direct using the Kemper Profiling
Amplifier with a Marshall 1987 profile from The Amp Factory. All
clean sounds were recorded with no profiles.
Bass: Sandberg Bullet Special
Synths: U-he Diva and Zebra2

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drums

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 2.6

Comments:

I recorded this as a sort of a challenge to myself. In a
forum thread started by the very inspiring guitarist Les Thomas
he wanted opinions about his recording being too wet. I thought
it was a bit wet and told him to hold back on "the space
grease". Les wrote that it could be a good title for a
tune.

I took that as a challenge. Not to use the name but to see
if I could write and record a tune that used no chorus, no delay
and no reverb. This funky tune was the result. I did feel I
had to put just a little ambience on the drums and the lead
guitar. The rest of the tracks were recorded bone dry and nothing
was added to the mix.

All clean guitars were recorded using the KPA but with the
Stack turned off. The lead guitar is a Marshall 1987 from The
Amp Factory.

Funny how writing sometimes turns out. I had entirely different
plans for this tune but these angular lines just popped out
of my guitar when I started playing over the bass and drums

A few weeks ago I was involved with a project where I produced
a video. In this project I met some lovely ladies belonging to
a local garden society and their passionate enthusiasm and love
for their garden inspired this tune.

James Tyler SE HD Buring Water and Classic with Bacon recorded
direct with the Kemper Profiling Amplifier using only profiles
from the Amp Factory.
Bass: Spectrasonics Trilian
Organ: NI Kontakt 5

Drums:

Native Instruments Session Drummer
Spectrasonics Stylus RMX

Recorded with:

PreSonus Studio One 2.6

Comments:

On my previous recording I stayed with one profile with the
Kemper to get a cohesive sound all through the tune and added
stomps to add gain. Here I did the opposite and tried to use as
many profiles as possible to get a collage of sounds. I had set
out to use only Andy's excellent profiles from The Amp Factory,
free and paid.

IThis originally started out like a smoother tune but turned
into what it was. I tried to sound like somebody else but as that
rarely pays off I got writer's block. So I finally chose another
guitar that wouldn't allow me to play/sound like the other player
and the block went away and here's a finished tune.

Sometime I write music for film. In this case I was asked
to write the music to a short movie by a local video artist
who made a video about different feelings and he wanted me to
illustrate these feelings with music. The only request was that
I used instruments found in the symphonic orchestra which I
managed to do except for one instrument. Somewhat unusual for
me but I really enjoyed the process of turning somebody else's
thoughts about feelings into music.

I keep wondering where my creativity comes from. I still have
no answer to that but that's where the title comes from.

I was going through all of Rob Papen's excellent VSTi plugins
and noticed that he was marketing Punch and SubBoomBass towards
electronic music like Hip-hop, Dubstep and other styles in that
general vein. I got it into my head that I should write a tune
based on those two plugins NOT in any of those styles. This is
the result.